


and i can find you anywhere

by voodoochild



Category: Taboo (TV 2017)
Genre: Dream Sex, F/M, Fix-It, Half-Sibling Incest, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Possession, Post-Canon, Telepathic Bond, Telepathic Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 23:37:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10057130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: Aboard the ship heading for his New World, James dreams of the one he lost. [Post 1.08 finale.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Golden Palaminos' "No Skin", such a perfectly Zilpha song if I ever heard one.

His Zilpha is gone.

This is what Lorna tells him, and what must be true in the eyes of men. The letter was written in her own hand, and those are her words. The mudlarks have likely found her body in the Thames - bloated, blue-lipped, driftwood weighing her down - and she will have been buried by Brace as he (as Lorna) has directed. 

She is gone.

She is at peace.

_Peace, my darling? You have never known the meaning of the word._

She is not at peace, James knows, because she is not dead.

She does not sing to him among the voices of the damned. He does not hear her pretty words in the ravenspeech, in the Nuu-Chah-Nulth of his mother's people. He does not hear her in the Lingala of the Kongo, the screams of drowning or burning or starving slaves. She does not appear to him as young Winter does, unbidden and uncontrollable as the dead always are.

He told Lorna the dead speak to him, and that is true. But he has never been able to invoke them, nor steer the discourse. When Winter comes, when Koman comes, when the howling of the damned comes, it is always the same. He can banish, he can refuse, but they always come and they always have their own words.

(He has descended into the hold to light his smoke-fires and drink the vision-wine. He has exhausted every shaman's trick and seer's method to contact her. This, above all, worries him, for there has never been a being in life *or* death that has eluded him.)

His light and love, his breath and home, his sweet sister who was never supposed to be touched by his diabolical planning? No, she is not dead. She is not stained by river-water, not snuffed out like a candle. She does not sing in death's chorus, and so he will continue believing she lives.

It is not so different, after all, to what he told himself aboard the Influence, in the jungle, and throughout those ten long years without her. He dreamt of her then, as he dreams of her now, though these dreams are very different from the fevered gleaming white of the past.

His dreams now are shadowed.

He is held in a cage of bone and blood, where the dark presses upon him like a weight. He cannot escape, though in life, he has snapped the bones of men like kindling. Here, he is weak, caged, and in pain of a kind he has never known.

(Lorna says, as she sits beside him on the foredeck, wind ruffling her hair, that it is grief, and that he must accept it.)

He is cold, in the dreams, and naked, and he feels a sinking shame he has never felt in life. He calls for Zilpha, because she must be out there, she *must*, and though he can breathe the scent of her and taste her mouth on his tongue, she never answers. Over three times he has had the dream, calling out and worrying Godders and Lorna.

(Atticus asks him about the saddest thing he has ever seen. James tells him it was Winter's missing heart, but in his own heart, it was his sister's smile.)

This time, when he calls to her from the cage, she appears. She wears a dress of raven's feathers, and her hair is unbound. She is whole and smiling and beautiful, and he wants nothing more than her in his arms.

The cage will not let him touch her, and he is bereft, tears streaming from his eyes.

_My love?_

_How often I wept for you in life. Fitting that you do it for me now._

_Let me out._

_I told you I found a way to slip between the bars of my cage. You must learn the same._

His heart pounds, every inch of him yearning for her. He has never needed her so badly. He reaches between the bars, but no matter how far he stretches, she is always out of reach.

_Did you truly jump?_

_Why must you ask? Surely you know. Your mind knows. Your body knows. Your heart knows._

_I don't. I call to you every night from the bowsprit. I lie above the waves with my ash and my pipe, and I beg for some sign of you in the afterlife._

_And what does that tell you, my love?_

_That you remain. That the letter was a lie. That you may return to me one day, never to be parted again._

He recalls his vision in the dye-house at Bedlam, of Zilpha calling for him from the deep. She was swimming, powerful strokes in the calm water, and she called to him. They kissed endlessly beneath the waves, as if breathing were unnecessary and everything else in the world meaningless.

The cage narrows, and he snaps the bars, rushing to her and lifting her into his arms. She feels as real as the night she buried her husband, as real as their forest interludes, as real as the first time he ever touched her. He kisses her now, as hard as he dares, his aching prick nudging at her slit and she opens for him, accepts him. 

Inhabits him.

As he penetrates her, so she penetrates him. His mind opens to her, unfurls like a banner, and he can see and hear and feel himself through her. He can taste the brandy on his own tongue, wants to die for the relentless drive of his prick inside her because she does. This is a practice that goes back to their childhood, this sharing of mind and body, this all-consuming fire within and without. The aching emptiness of her is as familiar to him as his own desire, the pain of needing to fuck the same as being fucked.

Her mind-voice is strong, so much stronger than the voice in her throat that has been choked and silenced by her former husband.

_Do you feel me? How my flesh burns and burns and is quenched only by you?_

His voice is hoarse even in their minds, his desperation bleeding like a wound. 

_I feel you now as we were of old. When the world was young and we were the only two that mattered. Now, my tongue numbs when it is not against yours and my strength falters with your absence._

And then the cage and forest disappears, and they are now lying on the waterside, tide lapping at their bodies. Water beads on her breasts and he puts his mouth to it, drinks with abandon. Licks up the slope of her breasts to feel her shiver from the inside out, bites down only hard enough to feel her press her heels into his back. Her skin nearly blends into the white sand, her hair flows into the dark tide.

He recognizes the beach. It is his destination, the Azores, a place she has never seen, and he believes with all his heart that this is a sign. 

Zilpha pulls herself on top, the beautiful canvas of her body stretched out for him, and sinks down on his prick. The pleasure overwhelms him - her scent and her body and her taste and her sounds - and he feels her mind push against his, crashing over him like the waves upon the shore. He overtook her that one night, sending her visions and sensations and pleasure beyond description, visiting her dreams.

She is doing the same now, a power she never had in life, and her nails rake down his chest.

_If your strength is faltering, brother, mine shall rise. Let me in._

It is as easy as a sigh, and she drags him under. Works herself atop his prick, and his own need dims. Everything is her pleasure, her delight at setting the pace and being given rein over him. He glories in the roll of her hips and the new pleasure his mouth on her breasts sets off. She's always loved being sucked, his mouth obeying her commands - remembers a sun-drenched glade and being home on leave, licking her cunt for hours and hours, until the world was twilight-dim and they'd had to hurry home.

_My James, I have not left you and I will never leave you. Promise me you will look to the horizon. If I can find you again in this life, I will._

Pleasure shatters sweet as he awakes in his bunk, her voice ringing in his ears and the feel of her mouth on his.

_I promise, my love._


End file.
